Happiness is coming across an author you've never heard of, writing about a subject in which you have no particular interest, both of which turn out to be far better than your wildest expectations. Edwin Thomas, not yet 30, but writing with the confidence and maturity of an established novelist, has set his story in Dover the year after the Battle of Trafalgar. His hero, Lieutenant Martin Jerrold, although present at the engagement, did not distinguish himself, having spent its entire duration below decks, drunk. We're given this engaging snippet at the very start of the book by Jerrold, who has no illusions about himself. Thomas won the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award for his opening chapter; the rest of the book is even better. Dover, one of the key anchorages for the Royal Navy at the height of the Napoleonic wars, was a far cry from the depressing lacklustre ferry terminal it has become since Vera Lynn did her best to make it romantic. It teemed with all the colour and life, mainly lowlife, that goes with being a busy naval port, and Thomas describes it with the acute eye for detail and ear for dialogue that Hardy had for Casterbridge. What I like best about Jerrold is his candid, humorous, self-deprecation. One critic has described him as a nautical Flashman, but he's far more sympathetic than Flash Harry, incompetent rather than villainous, with a predisposition to get into trouble less by design than default and of course through the demon drink. Can we have the sequel, The Chains of Albion, in audio soonest?

Unabridged, I'm sure I would have made more sense of this pleasantly sinister but at times incomprehensible mystery set in 1819, about a survivor from the Battle of Waterloo who becomes tutor to the young Edgar Allan Poe, the boy of the title. Taylor has the same flair for the macabre - his descriptions of life in the alleys and tenements of the Rookeries are extraordinarily vivid, as is Alex Jennings' reading, but either the abridger needed a sharpened knife or I'm losing my marbles. Either way, I was left with a lot of confusing loose ends, not least the final 15 minutes thanks to a dodgy tape. So, did he get the beautiful widow in the end?